


We've Got the View

by heyacas (lilypond)



Series: Crossposted Tumblr Fics [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-28 17:44:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3863929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilypond/pseuds/heyacas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The guy is up on his roof again.</p><p>Dean just thinks of him as “the guy” because he’s never had the courage to actually go introduce himself, and the other neighbors that came over to say hello to Dean when he moved in a few months back never mentioned him.</p><p>So. <em>The guy.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	We've Got the View

**Author's Note:**

> original post on tumblr [here](http://lilypond.co.vu/post/111544104163/the-guy-is-up-on-his-roof-again-dean-just-thinks)

The guy is up on his roof again.

Dean just thinks of him as “the guy” because he’s never had the courage to actually go introduce himself, and the other neighbors that came over to say hello to Dean when he moved in a few months back never mentioned him.

So.  _The guy._

Sometimes he’s  _doing_  something up there, though it’s impossible to see what from Dean’s bedroom window. Sometimes he’s just standing or sitting there, looking out over the neighborhood, or up at the sky.

Dean wonders what it looks like from up there. He’s had a pretty bad fear of heights since a tumble down the stairs and a broken arm when he was a kid, so there’s no way he can see himself actually  _getting_  up on a roof anytime soon – even if their houses  _are_  only two stories high – but he can’t help but wonder. He wonders if you can see the nearby streets, the other neighborhoods. Maybe you can even see the highway from up there.

But Dean’s never going to be brave enough to find out, so he just watches the guy. It’s a  _what the fuck is he doing up there_  day today. He’s got something in his hands, and he’s sitting cross-legged on the shingles, peering down at it intently.

A car door at the house next to Dean’s slams and the guy’s head jerks up at the noise. Dean jumps away from the window, as if somehow the guy’s gonna see him peeking through the blinds at him.

And even if he did, why should Dean care? It’s not like he’s staring into the guy’s bedroom. He’s sitting on his roof, for fuck’s sake. He’s probably used to getting strange looks and gawkers.

Still, Dean feels vaguely guilty about it even as he’s drifting off to sleep later that night. And maybe a little jealous.

\- - -

Okay, maybe Dean’s not feeling any braver than usual today, but he’s definitely feeling angrier than usual. Work was shit today, and he got in a yelling match with an idiot of a customer that – if he and Bobby weren't basically family – would have gotten him fired anywhere else. Some other asshole nearly ran him off the road on the way home, and he got to the beer aisle at the store just in time to watch someone else take the last case of his favorite beer and disappear around the corner.

So he’s got a six-pack of some shitty hipster crap and he’s fucking pissed and he’s going to get on his fucking roof today and see what the big deal is.

He’s not entirely sure how, because he doesn’t exactly have a ladder tall enough for this. Now that he’s looking for it, though, the extra bedroom’s window is positioned just right over the lower roof of the garage, and from there it’s not too far to the rest of it. He could totally pull himself up there.

Once he’s out on the garage roof, though, his anger is fading and he’s firmly back into  _what the fuck am I doing_  territory.

At least the slope of the roof is fairly gentle, and he feels a lot more stable up here than he thought he would. It’s not much different from standing on a hill with a gentle slope.

As long as he doesn’t look down.

He’s swinging back into angry, though, this time angry at himself, because he’s  _Dean fucking Winchester_ and like hell is he letting something stupid like a  _roof_  beat him. He’s got this.

He takes a minute to pause and look it over. It’s not actually  _that_ far, especially standing up close like this. The lip of the roof is about shoulder height. It wouldn’t even give him pause if he were, you know, on the ground.

He grabs the six-pack and shoves it far enough up the roof above him that he can’t reach it to get it back anymore, past the point where he’s afraid it’ll slip and fall while he’s climbing.

And now he  _has_  to get up there, or he’s gonna have to leave it there and be That Weird Guy with the Beer on His Roof. And hell, that shit was expensive.

So he grits his teeth, curses himself a few times under his breath, and hoists himself up. He scrapes his hands up a bit, and it’s not exactly fun for his knees as he gets his legs over, but it’s not nearly as hard as he’d been expecting it to be. He keeps going on hands and knees until he’s close to the center, away from the edge, grabbing the beer and dragging it along with him.

He fucking made it.

He turns carefully to sit and lets out a long breath when he’s finally settled relatively comfortably.

As he’s grabbing his first beer, someone says “good job, Dean,” and Dean just barely doesn’t drop the bottle.

“What?” Dean says. “Who –”

He leans forward just slightly, enough to see the sidewalk past the edge of his driveway, and the guy is standing there, smiling up at him.

“Have you been standing there watching me this whole time?” Dean says, blinking in disbelief.

The guy just shrugs, which is answer enough. Dean is torn between being mad at the guy and embarrassed as fuck because he must have looked like a terrified little kid, awkwardly scrambling up here and taking forever to do it.

“May I join you?” The guy says, and Dean still doesn’t understand what’s going on here but he nods automatically anyway. Before he can ask how the guy plans to do it he’s gone.

Dean can  _hear_  him, can hear some kind of shuffling and the scuffs of shoes, but he can’t see where he went.

When he pulls himself onto the roof from  _behind_  Dean, Dean nearly jolts forward in shock before remembering where he is.

“How the  _hell_  did you do that?”

“Lots of practice.” The guy’s not even out of breath, and as far as Dean can tell he just flat-out scaled the side of Dean’s house.

He comes to sit next to Dean, far too close for the complete strangers that they are. He also reaches out and takes a beer without asking and cracks it open.

“Ugh,” he says after a sip.

“Store was out of good shit,” Dean mumbles and opens his own.

“Warm, too,” the guy says, wrinkling his nose.

Dean shrugs and stares down at his hands. “Yeah, well. Took me a while to get it up here. But you already know that.”

A gentle hand is suddenly on his shoulder, and Dean looks up to find kind blue eyes looking back into his.

“I wasn’t being sarcastic, you know. I could tell it took a great deal of courage for you to do this, and you made it. I meant it when I said good job.”

Dean doesn’t want to admit how pleased that actually makes him, so he just shrugs. The guy takes his hand back and takes another sip of his beer.

“I’m Castiel, by the way. Cas. I know  _your_ name because I overheard Ms Barnes talking about how cute your ass was when you first moved in. She’s right, by the way, it’s a very nice ass.”

Dean splutters and nearly spits out his mouthful of beer. He turns and stares at the guy –  _Cas_  – who’s not even looking at him now, like he didn't say anything out of the ordinary at all. He’s just staring out into the distance.

“Look up, Dean. You came up here to see it, didn't you? Go on.”

And he’s right, of course, because Dean still hasn’t raised his eyes above street level. Like it’d make being up so high more  _real_  if he actually looked.

Cas takes his hand and squeezes it, and Dean should be weirded out but it’s actually really comforting.

So Dean looks up.

And holy shit. How can the sky look so different up here than it does from his bedroom window, not even five feet down? He knows they’re only two stories up, but it feels like he’s all the way up in the clouds, and for a moment it’s too beautiful to be scary.

The sky is just going orange as the sun trails its way down towards the mountains, cottonball clouds turning blush-pink in its wake, the moon hanging patiently above and waiting its turn.

He can, in fact, see the highway, can see the distant motion of the cars speeding past, but it seems so unreal from here. He can’t fathom that those are real people going by, that they’re going places and living their lives out there. Mostly what he can see of the other neighborhoods nearby are more roofs, scattered satellite dishes, the tops of trees.

He can’t see any people. Nobody’s even walking down their street right now.

It’s like they’re in their own world up here. A little pocket of the universe all to themselves, a moment where they've stepped out of the normal bounds of time to rest from life for a little while, a pause.

“Christ,” Dean breathes.

“Mm,” Cas agrees, finishing his beer with the hand not attached to Dean’s. “You see why I do this so often.”

“I really do.”

“Pass me another?”

Dean does without question, making no move to let go of Cas’ hand as he does so. Whatever this is, somehow while he’s up here none of the normal rules seem to apply, and he’s really strangely okay with that. This just feels right.

“I knit up here, sometimes,” Cas continues. “Or read. Or just watch. You can sit up here for hours and not get bored with it, you know. When you’re up here, all the people that pass by are suddenly so interesting. And the sky’s always moving, always changing. There’s always something new to look at.”

He scoots forward a little so he can lie back on the shingles, and Dean goes with him like it’s just natural for them to be in sync with each other.

There’s no more talking for a while. They finish the beer and watch silently as the sky turns orange and purple and the stars fade into sight. Cas absently runs his thumb over Dean’s knuckles occasionally, and sometimes Dean will squeeze his hand as if to make sure he’s still there and Cas will squeeze back.

It finally starts to get cold, and Dean definitely didn't expect to be up here for this long, so he doesn’t have a jacket on or anything. More importantly, Cas is beginning to shiver lightly.

“But,” Cas finally sighs. “You always have to come down in the end.”

Without another word they gather the empty bottles and put them back in the cardboard carrier, then Cas hops down onto the garage roof and Dean passes it to him. Cas sets it inside the open bedroom window and helps Dean climb down to stand next to him, hands steady around his waist and guiding him to safe footing.

“Well,” Cas says. “It was very nice to finally meet you, Dean.”

And Dean could leave it at that, he could let Cas go and let this evening be a wonderful, ephemeral memory, let Cas be the mysterious stranger he shared the moon and stars with one night in their little paradise away from the rest of the world.

Or.

Or maybe it wasn’t actually the roof that was so special. Maybe if he’d sat up there alone, it wouldn’t have been quite the same, quite so magical. Maybe he would have gotten bored twenty minutes in and awkwardly climbed back down to finish the beer zoned out in front of the TV, vaguely disappointed and never quite understanding. Maybe it’s just  _Cas_  that made it what it was. And if he lets him go now, he’ll never find out.

Dean reaches out and takes Cas’ hand again, and this time Cas looks surprised.

“C'mon,” Dean says softly. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

Cas smiles slowly, and it washes over his face like the sunset, spreading from his lips out to the corners of his eyes. His eyes twinkle in the low light like some of the stars climbed down here with them.

Finally he nods, and Dean leads him in through the window. Cas shuts and locks it behind them, never letting go of Dean’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on [tumblr](http://lilypond.co.vu)


End file.
